Pubdate: Sun, 16 Jan 2005
Source: Buffalo News (NY)
Copyright: 2005 The Buffalo News
Contact:  http://www.buffalonews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/61
Author: Michael Beebe, and Dan Herbeck, News Staff Reporters
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption - United States)

SCAPEGOATS IN BLUE?

Their families know them as hard-working cops and decent men, but
Sylvestre Acosta and Paul Skinner are now convicted criminals facing
severe prison sentences. Are they paying for the sins of far worse
offenders?

When the FBI targeted dirty cops in the Buffalo police narcotics
squad, nobody got hit harder in the crackdown than Sylvestre Acosta
and Paul Skinner.

Agents suspected that at least 10 detectives - roughly one quarter of
the elite drug squad in the 1990s - were taking bribes, filing phony
search warrants and stealing cash from drug dealers.

The FBI has since won convictions against seven of those detectives,
including Acosta and Skinner. Another was acquitted by a jury but
fired. A ninth detective awaits trial. And the tenth was never charged
after the FBI investigation.

But it was the outcome of last month's trial for Acosta and Skinner in
U.S. District Court that drew the most astonishment.

Unlike the other detectives, Acosta and Skinner were convicted of
using a gun during a violent felony, a gun they are required by law to
carry as a police officer.

Three separate gun convictions against Acosta mean 55 years will be
added to his five-year prison sentence for civil rights and conspiracy
charges. At 51, he will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Skinner, 46, with one gun count, faces 10 to 13 years in federal
prison, the second-longest term behind Acosta's.

While many in the criminal justice system applaud the narcotics squad
cleanup, the families of Acosta and Skinner cannot understand why
blame for the corruption falls so heavily on them.

"I'm dumbfounded," Skinner's wife, Barbara, said in an interview
before Christmas, the family's presents piled beneath the tree in
their Old First Ward home. "It's like I'm in a nightmare and I can't
wake up."

"This all hurts me so much," Acosta's daughter, Erica, 24, said
recently in her parent's South Buffalo home, where 15 family members
and their parish priest gathered to talk about Acosta. "It makes my
dad seem like such a bad person. He's not."

Acosta is one of the first Hispanics to serve as a Buffalo police
officer, a native-born Puerto Rican who never wanted to be anything
but a cop. He has a wall full of commendations.

Skinner is one of five brothers from the Old First Ward, three police
officers and two firefighters, whose rough-and-tumble approach made
them one of the most controversial but most decorated families in the
police and fire departments.

Critics call the case a painful illustration of a federal justice
system that offers huge rewards to those who take plea deals, and
punishes those who exercise their right to a trial.

Rene Gil, a rogue cop caught trying to sell ten pounds of cocaine
while he was a narcotics detective, took a plea deal. He'll be
rewarded with a sentence of 18 months for testifying against Acosta
and Skinner.

Gerald Skinner, Paul Skinner's hot-tempered younger brother and an FBI
target for years, also took a plea deal. He was sentenced to 30
months. He could have faced 105 years had he gone to trial.

"It would be one of the biggest injustices ever in this city if
Sylvestre did 60 years, while Rene Gil did about 18 months and Gerry
Skinner did 30 months," Acosta's brother-in-law Jack Gutowski said. "I
think Gerry Skinner was a bad man. And Rene Gil obviously was, too."

A proud family

It was a proud moment for the Skinner family after youngest brother
Ralph was appointed to the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority police
force, and the brothers gathered for a portrait in the mid-1980s.

They stood in their police and fire uniforms before an American flag,
five big strapping guys with thick mustaches, each well over 6 feet
tall.

Ken, a firefighter, is now 54; Scott, a fire lieutenant is 50; Paul,
46, and Gerald, 44, were police detectives; Ralph, 40, later moved
from the BMHA force to the police department. He is also in the Army
reserves, headed to Iraq after earlier serving in Afghanistan. A
sister, Christine, works as a police officer at Canisius College.

Brother John, who would be 49, was murdered in 1990 by another
resident of the First Ward, Harry "Bongo" Richardson. A manhunt for
Richardson led to accusations that the Skinner brothers had gone
through the neighborhood, bursting into homes and beating up people
looking for him.

No charges were ever placed against the Skinners, and Richardson was
later convicted of John Skinner's murder.

Through the years, the Skinner brothers pulled victims out of burning
buildings, disarmed a man threatening his 2-year-old daughter with a
butcher knife, and won some of the highest awards in both the police
and fire departments.

In 1987, Paul Skinner and his patrol partner, Bobby Hill, were looking
for a newspaper stand at 5 a.m. when a young woman flagged them down,
saying there was a man with a gun at her house. When they got there,
they rescued a woman being raped by the gunman. Upstairs, they found a
dead man the rapist had already shot.

That sort of bravery caught the attention of Michael McCarthy, a
Buffalo police lieutenant who put together a squad in 1990 to shut
down widespread drug trafficking on the city's West Side.

McCarthy picked Skinner and Hill, Skinner's brother Gerry, Acosta, and
Rene Gil to work as part of the 15-member Maryland Street Detail.

They shagged drug dealers off the corners, hassled their customers,
took no guff from anyone and made hundreds of arrests. It grew into
the Street Crime Unit and then the SNAP (Street Narcotics Attack
Program) Unit.

Neighbors praised their work for taking drug dealers off the streets,
but there were many complaints about civil rights being violated.

When a new police commissioner, R. Gil Kerlikowske, was appointed in
1994, he disbanded the SNAP unit.

While there were more than 12,000 arrests, Kerlikowske said, only
about a quarter of those charges ever made it to court. Those in the
disbanded squad then moved onto the narcotics unit.

Detectives testified during last month's trial that there was often
spotty supervision in the narcotics unit, that there was no
supervising lieutenant at nights for a long stretch, that rules were
often bent when search warrants were obtained, or drug informants were
paid.

Half the detectives in the 10-member Street Crime Unit - Gerald and
Paul Skinner, Sylvestre Acosta, Rene Gil and Bobby Hill - were later
convicted in federal court. A sixth member, Andres Ortiz, has been
indicted and charged with passing on information to drug dealers.

Two other narcotics detectives, Darnyl Parker and John Ferby, were
convicted along with Hill of taking $36,000 from an FBI undercover
agent posing as a Jamaican drug dealer. And a fourth detective, David
Rodriguez, was acquitted of the charges but fired by Police
Commissioner Rocco Diina.

Taking a plea deal

Gerald Skinner, a cop with a violent temper who the FBI targeted for
years, was arrested with Paul Skinner and Acosta.

But Gerald Skinner, who has been jailed since the January 2003 arrests
because he was also accused of threatening the lives of witnesses,
took a separate course.

He pleaded guilty to lesser charges last April and avoided prosecutionon 
the potent gun charges. With time served, he could be a free man in
July after pleading guilty last year.

That doesn't sit well with his sister-in-law.

"They told my husband, if he would give them his brother (Gerald), he
would be back to work the next day," Barbara Skinner said of the FBI.
"He wouldn't tell on his brother. The feds said, "We'll destroy you
financially.' "

The FBI denies its agents ever made the remark. Paul Skinner's family,
however, is financially destroyed.

Paul Skinner was convicted Dec. 17, a month shy of collecting his
pension after nearly 20 years in the police department. His pay
stopped. His city-provided medical insurance for his family stopped.
He will get no pension. Whatever savings he had went toward paying his
lawyer.

Acosta, retiring after his arrest, did get a pension for his 23 years
in the department. So did Gerald Skinner, who was granted a state
disability pension that pays him nearly $53,000 a year even while he
is in prison.

"I have no income, I have no medical insurance, I have diabetes and
have seven prescriptions I have to take," said Barbara Skinner,
frequently breaking into tears. "I don't know what I'm going to do.
I'll have to go on welfare. I'll have to go on Medicaid."

For the Acosta family, the outcome is even worse.

Acosta, who turned 51 on New Year's Eve in the Niagara County Jail,
will never again be a free man if his conviction and 60-year sentence
are not overturned.

Acosta talked about the plea bargain with his family before the
trial.

"I'm not taking a plea deal," his son, Sylvestre Jr., recalled him
saying. "I'm not going to plead guilty to something I didn't do. I'm
going to let a jury decide."

Sharing the loot

The Skinner and Acosta families sat in court every day during last
month's trial, watching the parade of crackheads, drug dealers,
prostitutes and former narcotics detective Gil accuse the men they
knew as husband or father, not a thief who would steal if he thought
no one was looking.

Three weeks of accusations against Paul Skinner and Acosta seemed to
boil down to a few things that their families feel led to their
convictions.

FBI agents testified that they found items stolen in drug raids during
the searches at the two ex-cops' homes.

In Skinner's home, agents found a laptop computer taken from a drug
suspect. A switchblade taken in a raid was found in Skinner's desk
drawer. A ring taken from a drug suspect's home was found hidden
inside a cigarette pack in Acosta's garage.

There also were accusations by Gil that the two detectives had shared
in loot found during drug raids. A West Side handyman, a former police
officer in Puerto Rico, said Acosta stole $1,500 from him.

Skinner and Acosta did not testify. Their families dispute anything
said by Gil, saying he was desperate to save himself. They point to
their own modest homes as proof they received no riches.

Barbara Skinner said her husband had already served a 10-day
suspension for not properly logging the laptop as taken during a raid.
She claimed that he had taken it home to search its hard drive for
evidence on drug smuggling from Canada.

If Skinner was running any such investigation, he never told any of
his superiors about it, prosecutor James P. Kennedy said.

"And he also went out and bought a leather case for the computer,"
Kennedy said.

Skinner's family said the leather case was purchased for use as a
briefcase and not for carrying the computer.

The Acostas claim the ring found in their garage is one of a pair of
inexpensive rings the former cop bought for himself and his son. And
they said it was worth only a few dollars, a ring that could be bought
anywhere.

"How many of you keep your valuable jewelry in your garage, in a
cigarette pack?" prosecutor Kennedy asked jurors at the trial.

But to the Acosta family, that is flimsy evidence to send someone away
for 60 years.

"Sylvestre would never betray his country. Never!" said Acosta's
father-in-law, Francisco Rodriguez, his fists clenched in anger as he
spoke. "He's not a criminal!"

Barbara Skinner continues to believe in her husband,
too.

"I want people to know my husband was a good cop, how he helped
people," she said. "He didn't steal money, he didn't beat anybody up,
he didn't hurt anybody."

James Jackson, a retired city cop who served as a narcotics squad
lieutenant and led more than 100 drug raids without an accusation
against him, has mixed feelings about the verdicts.

"I certainly wouldn't justify anything he did," Jackson said of
Acosta, "but people who are convicted of much more heinous crimes,
like manslaughter or rape, get a lot less than 60 years."

Jackson wondered about the effect on working police from a law that
includes such stiff penalties for carrying a gun.

"A police officer is required to carry a weapon; it's part of the
job," Jackson said. "At the same time, when you bust somebody's door
down on a drug raid, the people inside know you're cops. They know you
have guns, and that causes some fear. You should never misuse the gun
or the badge."

U.S. Attorney Michael A. Battle, who made the call on charging Acosta
and Skinner with the gun crimes, makes no apologies.

"You would never make the argument that a police officer should be
allowed to use his gun to rob a bank," Battle said. "In this case, you
had officers using their guns and badges to conduct illegal drug
raids, breaking into houses. It's not a case of cops using their guns
to carry out official duties."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Derek